Sparks Middle School Shooting: Teacher Killed While Protecting Kids

In the wake of the tragic Nevada middle school shooting that left two dead and two critically injured, police have released the name of the math teacher who was killed while trying to protect his students: Michael Landsberry.

Michael Landsberry has been identified by his brother as the slain teacher gunned down by a teenage student shooter at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nev. on Oct. 21. The suspect used a semiautomatic handgun to kill Michael and injure two 12-year-old male classmates before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Read on for more details.

Michael, a former Marine and a member of the Nevada Air National Guard, leaves behind his wife, Sharon, and her two children from a prior relationship, his brother, Reggie, told NBC News.

Michael was shot and killed while trying to disarm the shooter, whose identity has not yet been released.

“In my estimation, he is a hero,” Tim Robinson, deputy chief of the Sparks police, says of Michael.

Chanda Landsberry, Reggie’s wife, said she would expect nothing less from the longtime teacher.

“To hear he was trying to protect those kids doesn’t surprise me at all,” she says. “He could have ducked and hid, but he didn’t. That’s not who he is.”

Michael’s efforts may have saved many lives, including those of the two boys who were wounded in the shooting. They were initially rushed to the hospital in critical condition, but they are now in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries, officials said at a news conference.

Sparks Middle School Shooting: Slain Suspect Killer Was A Young Student

“A staff member at Sparks Middle School is deceased,” a spokesperson for the Sparks Police Department said during a press conference. “The other deceased person is a student/suspect.”

A witness also confirmed that it was a teen student who opened fire on a classroom, and then gunned down the teacher who tried to disarm him. “The student was pointing a gun at the teacher after the teacher told him to put it down, and the student fired a shot at the teacher, and the teacher fell, and everybody ran away,” the eyewitness told the Reno Gazette Journal.

Police also revealed that the two people rushed to the Renown Regional Medical Center were male minors. Both boys were initially in critical condition, and one underwent surgery, while the other was said to be doing better and recovering.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Michael’s family, as well as everyone else affected by this tragedy.